Reflexive Wizards
The house I'm living in is full of books. All kinds of books, from all over the place. It means I am reading a lot.
I finished Everything's Eventual by Stephen King. Some good stories, the best two were The Road Virus Heads North and 1408.
(Mild spoilers ahead)
Fear is a strange thing. The Road Virus is not a complicated story, but it taps into a primal fear I have, of the approaching inevitability of some kind of horrible death-by-monster and being unable to do anything about it. All struggles and fleeing for naught. The 'thing' will get me. No matter what.
All my nightmares when I was growing up followed that template. A monster of the day style scenario (or monster of the night, I guess) but the linking factor was the impossibility of escape. The Road Virus channelled that fear very well.
1408 is similar, actually, though in this case it's more the impossibility of fighting something you cannot understand. But it's that inevitability that really stokes the fear. The hopelessness of it.
I then read Wizards - Stories of Mischief, Magic and Mayhem. This is an anthology that was brought out following the success of Harry Potter in an attempt to capitalise on the sudden interest in wizarding. It was very strange! Firstly, despite the title of the book, very few of the stories had actual wizards in. There were witches (okay), fairies (hmm), and trolls. And an excerpt from The Secret Garden which... it's been a while since I read it, but I don't think there's ANY magic in it!
The book was also nominally aimed at children, but included The Nose by Nikolai Gogol. Actually, the best story in the book imo, but I am not sure how much the average child would care for it.
Right now I am reading Reflex by Dick Francis. Published in 1981, this is a mystery novel about a jockey. It is competent genre fiction and fun to read. It also apparently spent 4 months on the New York Times Bestseller list. It made me think about all the successful books that kind of just... vanish... from our cultural memory.
There's just so many books. So many books and so many authors. You could read a book a day, every day, for 90 years and still barely scratch the surface.